


Solstice

by 57821



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25433542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/57821/pseuds/57821
Summary: Lucy thinks of her time traveling Panem and of winter.
Relationships: Coriolanus Snow/Lucy Gray Baird
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Solstice

She had not been lying when she told him she had been through most of Panem. 

Foggy memories would flicker back to her, of how the sun would shine so bright in Four that little Lucy would have to shield her eyes with a flat small palm. Squinting as she trailed along her mother’s lead down to the hidden side of the bay, where one could fish freely without the lurking eyes of the Peacekeepers stationed at seaside. Sand trapped in her thick curls, the never-ending sound of waves beating against the rocks along the shore and the queasy ache of her stomach after accidentally swallowing a mouthful of seawater.

If one lived in Four, they were luckier than most. Winter never laid it's deadly hand in this region, frost never froze the boats of those who were lucky to own one and the peril of the chills of Yule never touched the lungs of those who dwelled on Panem’s coastline.

However, the people of Four were not entirely spared from the wrath of Panem. Sometimes, a hazy gloom of clouds would fill the sky and those that were old enough to be shipped off at sea were trapped in the unforgiving dark waves of the deep until the gloom subsided. Unable to return to land by both the will of the commanding Peacekeepers and of the waters that they had toiled in as to forge their homes. Heavy rainfall would wash away their homes during the most difficult of seasons, leaving their young and old defenseless against the waves of the deep.

But there was some good.

Scattered memories of the piercing strum of a banjo in a dimly lit pub, trademark sea salt in the air that was forever inescapable in Four, and the sharp stench of cheap whiskey. Those that worked down at the docks stumbling into the crumbling shack after a long day of hard toil at sea. With their battered scar ridden faces and their weary almost eyes springing into animation at the sound of her voice, it brought a smile to Lucy’s face. Their gruff, worn voices scraping out shanties they’d sing at sea with the rest of her Covey during intermission and their voices would blend in together like one big family.

“Family. That’s what we all are in the districts,” is what her father liked to say, way back before _the_ _Peacekeepers,_ before the days when Mama had to fight tooth and nail to keep herself from breaking down when not only Lucy, but the Covey needed her the most.

Even they could not escape the mighty hand that the Capitol suffocated the districts with. Slowly squeezing the life and soul of those who dwelled at the bottom until they could give no more. Rootless they were, but even a song couldn’t buy freedom in Panem.

* * *

In Eight, you would not expect it’s people to be scrambling to scavenge threads they could find before the winter season. A week after they arrived, they had discovered that a woman had been publicly executed for the crime of gathering fabric for the winter. Slipping small pieces of torn undesirable fabric into her pocket after a hard day’s work at the machines in the hulking steel factory district, only to be discovered by one of the stationed Peacekeepers. They beat her until she fell limp, bloody, and blue onto the flat concrete square as the district stood silent and stationary.

Up in Eight, the air was thin and difficult to adjust to and Lucy remembers coughing up a storm for a week, her head spinning as she tried to adjust to the climate. A mountainous district, where the people were accustomed to living amongst the frost yet they were not provided with what was needed to sustain themselves year-round, much less in the season of ice. In those long frosty nights, they needed sustainability, they needed protection against the thin standard uniforms that were provided as they made their way into the stuffy towering factories that were poorly heated. Master craftsmen they were, despite the lack of materials they were given outside of providing the elite of Panem with their well-woven threads. Weaving anything they could to keep them secure for the winter, harvesting the pelts of animals who dared to venture near.

One night after a performance, she was given something by a kind man with heavy wrinkles on his face and a warm smile. A scarf stitched together of rabbit serving as her payment for the night, with its gray fur gleaming against the oil lamps that adorned the pub that they frequented for their weekly concerts.

“Bet that thing made a real doozy of a stew.” Her Mama had joked when she was presented with it.

“It’s for the solstice.” He explained with a smile. “The longest day of the year.” 

He was right. The sun had set in the mid-afternoon, far earlier than she had ever witnessed. She remembers her Mama carrying her in her arms as the old man led the Covey into a clearing, a moderately sized log cabin where a group of those from the district were gathered. Gnawing off pieces of rough-dried deer from in between their teeth as they waited for something, ever so still. A tradition they’ve always seemed to hold down up there in Eight was explained to them. Solstice. A sign of new beginnings and prosperity, a celebration of the Night and of the moon, and that they were at the halfway point of when winter would cease. Ever so hopeful they were, despite the rags they wore on their backs.

Lucy fell asleep early that night but she was stirred awake by Mama that morning when it was still dusk. Outside, people held small torches of fire, looking up at the sky, watching as day finally arose from the endless night before. Holding the rabbit scarf close to her, shielding her neck from the cold, she huddled close to her Mama as she laid a steady hand on her shoulder. Pitch black molded with promising purples and blue as deep as the waters in Four as snow lightly dusted their hair, their clothing.

Reaching up on the tips to her toes, she held her tongue out, catching the coolness of a snowflake as her eyes watched the sun come up into view. That golden bundle of fire rising up to reclaim the sky that the dusty pink and blues up above threatened to take hold.

Slowly they came together and threw down all their torches into one big bonfire. And the sun touched the sky once more and the fire of the torches burned along with it and the hope of Eight burned fiercely along with it, uncontrollable like the flames of the sun.

In her eyes, that speck of winter that day up in Eight was one of the most beautiful things she had ever witnessed in all of Panem.

* * *

Eleven was bittersweet. Snow did not touch them, but to be out there in the heat, toiling all day - it was nothing less but hell on Earth.

The Covey arrived in the early fall-time. The year’s harvest was in full effect. Everyone down in the district from the little youngin’s to the old-timers were out and about doing their part, making sure that the Capitol’s bread was safe and secure for the upcoming winter up north. Each toiling with sweat running down their brows, knowing that not one crumb would go into their hungry mouths once the last barrel of wheat was cut and the last apple was picked. 

Rebellion lived in the souls in the people of Eleven. No matter how many beatings they endured and how much blood that was spilled, soaking the soil that would birth the next load of food off to the Capitol, that spark that was begging to spread forth refused to die out. 

A woman offered to braid her hair down in Eleven in exchange for them to play at her granddaughter's wedding. Juniper was her name, or was it? The others down in the districts praised her talents, the best of her craft in if not the whole district, then in Panem. Lucy remembered sitting down there for what it felt like hours, crouched down as she’d tell stories of the good and the ugly. 

Crooning tales of the way people before Panem, before everything used to worship the Earth, the Sun and the Harvest; treating it as sacred. A complete opposite of what it is right now, where people joined together in their villages to break bread in celebration of a new day, a new age. Juniper lamented on, slick tree oil lathered in the palms of her aged brown hands as she ran her fingers through her thick coils, weaving her hair in practiced twists and turns until fresh braids reached down to her shoulders. Lucy’s head stinging as she bid her thanks before she ran off to her Mama’s side.

Harmony, love, and harvest. That seemed like a long way from Panem. Yet that very day, it came to life.

The Covey were mostly paid in stories and in songs down in Eleven, for food was scarce among them. But today was a special day. A day of joining people as one. Before they knew it, a whole flock of couples came down together, dressed in the cleanest clothes they had before the Covey began to play. The heavy pit-pattering of feet jumping about, arms looping in some sort of dance and the sun was a shining and it almost felt like they were free. Lucy remembered squealing in delight as young couples jumped the broom, crying out “bleh” when they saw people planting kisses on each other’s lips and eating the meager sharings that the square joined together to share. They were as alive as they could ever be, despite constantly being surrounded by life, by the ever-growing fruits that they were denied of tasting, the seed of their labor. And they were happy.

Lucy decides she likes Eleven the best.

* * *

There is no easy way to describe Twelve. Worn down houses being barely held together with dry pieces of wood, overgrown weeds in every direction, the ever-present scent of death in the air. Proud oaks that made up the forests stretching their limbs as high as they could, fields of bright wildflowers and the occasional edible plant. The smoke that would rise out of the mines and into the lungs of the district’s inhabitants, slowly blackening their lungs over time if they didn’t starve to death first. Something like an endless graveyard, was it? Bleak and gray but with a certain beauty about it. A stillness.

Twelve was quiet. Calm but not peaceful. It always felt like there was something brewing within there, waiting to burst out. Like being in the eye of a storm. They shouldn’t have been surprised when their voyage took a quick turn when they arrived down there. 

By the time they made it down to Twelve, the war had begun. Lucy still thinks it’s a miracle, that they were stopped in Twelve before they were able to make it to Thirteen. 

Down there even before the rebellion, snow was a sure sign of death. Still, even in the dead of winter, the miners had to trudge down to the deep underground where they would be met with explosives and if one was misfortunate enough, a bloody hunk of soot and coal would be left of their loved ones to pick up as they’d work out how to survive the rest of the season. 

“At least they had one less mouth to feed.” A Peacekeeper would chuckle and it made Lucy want to heave up the meager scraps of food her Covey could find.

Putrid air filled with ash and smoke from the mines made the winter sickness worse. It’s a miracle that they survived. But there was still the question of food. Collecting water was all right, they could boil down the snow outside with the sparse pots they had dragged along in their travels. But food? The problem with food down here was almost as worse as Ten, where the livestock was forbidden to be slaughtered, and if one such as breathed in the wrong way near the storage stocks, their bludgeoned, battered up body would be on display in the public square in no time.

No food? No problem. There’d always be the Hob, where they’d throw down the house like the night would never end. Sometimes a fresh face among the bunch, a newer recruit among the Peacekeepers would bid mercy on them and drop in a fresh rabbit in their bin and they’d have a real feast they would and Lucy would feel sated for the first time in weeks.

There was something about the people of Twelve and their depraved grey eyes that still held something in them. She looked forward to the nights they’d have a show when they would all huddle up in that big ol’ room that housed the Black Market of Twelve and their inner selves would come out, alive and on fire. A strike of the match against coal. Burning and they’d all hoot and a holler when the first banjo string that needed a fixin’ would ring out and the room would burst into life. Life something that was rarely truly lived down in Twelve.

And as she grew up in that Hob, sometimes there’d be bar fights, district men and women under the influence of booze and maybe a little something else and the Peacekeepers would have to usher out everyone and everything would be ruined. But they always came back, their little source of entertainment keeping them alive in bleak plain little Twelve where little action happened besides the never-ending war amongst the people and the burning anger that Lucy was sure would never die out. 

In those moments, when the crowd would get to hollerin’ and whistlin’ and their gray little eyes would burst into life at the sight of Lucy Gray in bleak gray Twelve where her smooth, soulful voice could bring life to even the most destitute of places, she decides that Twelve isn’t so bad. They just need a little encouragement.

* * *

On reaping day, when her name was picked, she almost felt triumphant. She had never been to the Capitol before. City of Dreams, City of Gold. City of Death. 

As Lucy finished her song and was escorted by those Peacekeepers that she knew that always attended her shows off into that filthy enclosed cattle cart, adrenaline filled her depraved bones. 

Was she scared? Of course. 

But was she excited? Even more so.

* * *

In the Capitol, not one snowflake fell. Perhaps it was symbolic. After all, the games were held during the spring season, after the harsh season of toil and ice came to a hold. Maybe it was a message to them all. 

_“You’ve survived the harshest season outta them all, now let me see if ya’ll can survive this!”_

Well, it’s not like anyone at home would be watching.

Lucy did find one speck of winter through the haze of the storm. Something about that fella’ named Coriolanus and his neatly combed parted bleached blonde hair. With his rigid, almost stiff posture, as though afraid someone had caught him in the act of mischief. A boy in a man's job. 

But those eyes. Those calculating steely blue eyes, always searching looking for something, always on alert. That’s what shook her to the core of her heart.

Mama had always warned her to watch out for someone’s eyes, that they were the windows to someone’s soul. “You better watch out for that evil eye especially now.” She’d say, waving her nagging finger. “You don’t know what type of karma they'll try to put on you.“ The old phrases that she’d picked up, one’s from The Old World. As much as the words never made sense to her, somehow they felt familiar. 

Like that Coriolanus. 

Maybe it was something about those little acts of kindness. Like that white rose, he gave her that kept her and Jessup fed for a night or so. And the food he’d slip her through napkins. Or the fresh bar of soap his cousin sent over and her newly fixed dress, little luxuries that she could barely even afford back at home. Those careful eyes everso keeping an eye on her and her dignity.

She didn’t think twice to jump on top of him, to shield his body from the incoming bombs in the booming arena. War is a fickle thing and no one more than Twelve knows what it’s like to scrape through the grime and the bodies and the never-ending ash that poisoned their lungs from the coal mine while still managing to avoid the shrapnel that sprayed from the heavy-duty bombs of the Army of Panem. She didn’t need to think twice. It’s awful. She’s been there. He seems to have it all. But he’s still human. 

But at that moment when the never-ending boom of the bombs intensifies the fear that’s been laying deep down inside her since the war, since the minute her name was picked - she tastes roses. Heavy roses on her lips, a phantom memory of the first gift he gave her. She can feel him trembling from underneath him and suddenly she’s being yanked away by a Peacekeeper with a rough grip in her arm, but she can feel the heavy perfume on her lips and with a free hand, she presses her finger to the bottom of her lip.

_Roses._

In her decision to trust those eyes, she won herself her ticket to freedom and something more. She met snow in spring, young love blooming amid the spilt blood and bones of her brothers and sisters, the fallen. Her estranged family only separated by borders, forever wiped away from history. Reaper who she had outrun until he was no more, with a face that looked like hers and those eyes that viewed all of them as one. And poor sweet Jessup, another victim of the disease of war, mouth foaming in the disease that tarnished the districts. 

“Dirty district scum,” those words that swirled around many a Peacekeeper's lips back home, here in the Capitol. Words reserved for her and her comrades only. Jessup, his blood tainted with a disease of the districts, a disease of himself just for his mere existence. Her disease that she’s forever tainted with no matter how many flashy words she spoke of that night of her interview when she insisted that she was different, she was Covey, practically Capitol! 

_“I grew up in Panem and Panem is me, and nothing about me is as district as thee!”_ a little voice in her head would mock her. Her parents would be so disappointed in her. Well, the show must go on, as they’d say.

* * *

Maybe it was fate she decides, for the two of them to meet together. For him to complete the full circle of her song. One who murdered three. Three who murdered three. 

Arlo, poor Arlo Chance. The spark in him that refused to die out even as that rope fastened on his throat clawed at him, tightening around him like one of her snakes until he was no more. His sacrifice would not be in vain, she would make sure of it. To live on through a song, a poignant afterlife. Next with her, out in the arena, fighting for her survival, blood on her hands that she could never wash out, no matter how many water bottles Coryo sent her. Three tributes. Snakes, songs, self-defense, and nightmares that would shake her to her core until her dying days. 

Finally, _Him._ And well... she didn’t find out until it was too late, out in the open and surrounded by nothing but the woods and Snow.

A man who murdered three. Man, mankind who murders. The war lives on, games or not. Or maybe it was always there, just waiting and bursting to come forth.

He’s left by now, probably and she’s still too afraid to come out. Maybe she’s still in survival mode from the arena, stuck hiding amongst the trees like she did down there in the tunnels, reeking of her own filth; long gone was the pristine glow of her skin scrubbed down in Tigris’ soap. Or maybe she’s still the scared little girl she is deep down inside no matter how proud her exterior.

Mama always told her to stay positive, no matter what.

“Own what little pride you got left, baby.” She’d say. “Shit, it’s all we got left.”

Lucy thinks it’s slipping. 

_‘The Covey’ll take care of you, they’ll take care of you because no matter what, no matter how hard the President beats down on us, the districts are all family. We are all family_ ’, something she repeated to herself every single day since Ma’s passing, a combination of her upbringings but she can’t help but feel trapped in this moment. A reawakening in the eye of danger.

Snow, which was a death sentence for many in Panem was as much as a threat regardless in what form it came in. Lucy only wished she knew that before-hand. Some so-called Capitol girl she claimed she was.

And as for Coryo? He was the real cream of the crop, all right. The real pickin’.


End file.
